My Cross to Bear

by Gregg Allman

all my mother wanted to do was get the hell out of Vanleer.

“I just measured my dick, and from the day we got out of school until today”—which was the last day of summer vacation—“I’ve given her nineteen miles, four hundred seventy-two feet, and three inches of dick!”

“I counted a few times, and I got me an average of how many strokes it took me before I finished. I took that and multiplied it all out, and came up with that figure.”

They put saltpeter in the potatoes so nobody would get horny, and they put laxative in the coffee so everybody would crap at the same time. You’d walk into the bathroom, and up on this big concrete slab was a row of about ten toilets, and everybody would sit together. I mean, Jesus Christ, that was terrible.

To sing properly, you have to get into a mind-set where you don’t give a damn if somebody doesn’t like it. You couldn’t care less, you’re singing for the gods—because they gave you the ability to sing, or at least what sounds like singing to you. You’re putting your whole soul into it, all the happiness you ever had, every tear you’ve ever shed—all of that goes into your singing.

Floyd gave me a tip about singing that I later heard from some other people: don’t sing from your chest. If I sang more than a couple of songs, my voice would be gone, because I was singing from my chest. You don’t want to do that, because then you’re blowing wind past your vocal cords, and they’ll get pretty tattered if you keep doing that.

Let’s say I was going to count to three, and haul and hit you in the stomach as hard as I could. What would you do?” I told him, “I’d tighten up my tummy.” He put my hand on my stomach and said, “You see how hard that is? That’s where you sing from. That’s where the power comes from. When you know you’re going to scream, you lay your head back, which spreads your vocal cords real wide, and when the scream comes out, it barely nicks your vocal cords. You don’t want to do too much of that, because there’s soft, tender meat down there.”

“Little Milton” Campbell had the strongest set of pipes I ever heard on a human being. That man inspired me all my life to get my voice crisper, get my diaphragm harder, use less air, and just spit it out. He taught me to be absolutely sure of every note you hit, and to hit it solid.

learned from him to understand which part needs to be soft and which part needs to be delivered with force, what I call “throat busters.” On those, you just harden up your tummy, and you let that boy out real quick, you kinda let it escape.

I used earplugs, I drank hot tea and honey, I gargled in the shower, and I let the hot water run down my throat. But the one thing that brings your throat back completely is sleep—lovely, peaceful sleep, and lots of it.